The last thing Joo Tae-hyun did that Seo Baek-han saw was to do what he could immediately, without looking back at him until the end. Reporters and all sorts of people began to rush at him like a pack of dogs, but Joo Tae-hyun acted calmly.
Thank goodness. Seo Baek-han closed his eyes with a slightly relieved heart. He was also relieved that he didn’t show Joo Tae-hyun the unsightly sight of bleeding profusely and fainting.
* * *
『…Assemblyman Seo Hong-gyu, who visited the scene, remained silent in response to questions from the press and silently helped with the cleanup. It is expected that there was prior collusion among those who registered to visit the academic conference, and the school has not been unsealed even after a considerable amount of time has passed. Assemblyman Seo said that he delivered lunch boxes prepared at his own expense to visitors who could not go outside. In addition, he urged the on-site staff to take all measures to ensure the emotional stability of general visitors who were greatly shocked. Meanwhile, the Presidential Security Service-.』
『Citizens who heard the news are also unable to hide their shock. (Gangnam Station) When I first saw it on social media, I thought it was fake news? I thought it was something like that. Second Prince and his wife were also scheduled to visit, and it was said to be an event with many foreign dignitaries, so how could such a thing happen…? I still can’t understand how it could happen inside a university-.』
『(Pyongyang Station Waiting Room) Oh, I was so upset! I still remember him toddling around Pyongyang with his grandfather and father since he was a baby! Seo Baek-han is like a son or grandson to people my age. But when I heard that he was stabbed, I was so shocked and tearful-.』
Choi Yeon-jun, unable to bear the boredom, flipped through the TV channels and couldn’t stand the endless praise for Assemblyman Seo and concern for Seo Baek-han, so he pretended to gag, “Ugh.”
“Ugh, they should know about your shitty personality.”
Even as he said that, Choi Yeon-jun shook his head violently from side to side as if he was getting goosebumps just thinking about when he first heard the news of the attack.
“Hey. But are you really okay? Look at this again. Can you read it?”
“It wasn’t a major surgery. They just stitched it up, so what’s there to be okay or not okay about?”
“Damn it, this bastard is talking about stitching up his stomach like it’s double eyelid surgery? And you bled like crazy!”
He also added nonsense, asking if he had surgery without anesthesia like Zhuge Liang, and how he could be so fine when he couldn’t even come to his senses and just spouted nonsense for an hour after a sleep endoscopy.
Seo Baek-han was about to say that he wasn’t Zhuge Liang, but he stopped because it was too much of a hassle. He probably wanted to talk about Guan Yu being shot with a poisoned arrow, but he figured it was good enough that Choi Yeon-jun even remembered Zhuge Liang’s name.
Tsk. Seeing that it’s too much of a hassle to nag at him, it seems like his condition isn’t normal.
“By the way, Assemblyman Seo is amazing too. His son got stabbed, but he doesn’t even look in on him.”
Looking around the empty hospital room, Choi Yeon-jun’s lips drooped like a catfish, as if he wasn’t feeling well. Even though his father was like that, even the other family members didn’t show their faces, and he seemed disappointed.
“Everyone must be busy when something like this happens. It’s not like someone died, and the surgery went well, so why would they come?”
Yes, the surgery was perfect.
An abdominal stab wound is by no means an easy thing to deal with. However, according to Dr. Han, the attending physician, ‘this expression is a bit much, but the knife was really ‘well’ inserted.’
‘As you can see from the CT scan, it feels like the blade didn’t go in deeply horizontally, but rather drew a long line vertically.’
The blade didn’t rummage around inside the abdomen, so he avoided the worst-case scenarios such as perforation or organ damage. He said that there would be a large scar on the skin, but it was a great relief that it ended like this.
‘I was surprised to hear that it was an abdominal stab wound and rushed over, but I couldn’t see the knife… Actually, I was preparing myself. As Director knows well, it’s better to handle the side where the blade is stuck in the affected area. If you pull out the knife carelessly, the organs will be damaged in the process, and above all, the bleeding will become uncontrollable.’
Dr. Han added various explanations to let him know how lucky he was, but Seo Baek-han felt even more disgusted after hearing that.
This wasn’t lucky, it was like something that happened as intended by the bastards who make a living with knives? Maybe the fact that I got stabbed instead of Joo Tae-hyun was also a result that those bastards had in mind.
He knew that there were stupid guys who talked about patriotism and conservatism and did ridiculous things.
It looked like the work of losers who were thirsty for video views, so the Presidential Security Service might have been careless, he thought.
Of course, it’s something that should never have happened, but public institutions usually have some sloppy corners.
Still, he didn’t seem like a full-fledged terrorist, so he thought he could quickly find the guys who helped with the trickery inside… But the more he listened to Dr. Han, the more suspicious things came to the surface.
Was it really something that mediocre people did by chance that left such a clean and precarious wound? They were trembling so much that they couldn’t even raise their voices properly. But they were calm when they stabbed someone?
If you think about it the other way around, the answer comes out. If it were me, I wouldn’t have been able to do this. I would have been so nervous and excited that I would have stabbed and poked wildly.
An attack that wouldn’t take a life, but could give people a visual shock.
What’s the reason for doing this?
And who is behind it?
Is it simply because they hate Shifters, as the bastards shouted, or is it the work of bastards who oppose Shifter-related bills? Or…….
“Hey, by the way, hospital rooms are really nice these days?”
Choi Yeon-jun raised his voice awkwardly, watching Seo Baek-han’s dark and sunken expression as he was lost in thought.
“It’s not a hotel, but it even has a smart TV? And it’s so big.”
『Anyway, that Joo Tae-hyun has a bad face. His expression is gloomy, have you ever heard the saying that he’s destined to devour his husband? I can feel that kind of energy.』
Choi Yeon-jun, who was randomly pressing various parts of the screen as if he was playing a mobile game, jumped in surprise at the raw short-form video that was accidentally played.
“W-what is this!”
『That’s right. Her husband even took a knife for her, but she didn’t even look in on him and was chatting with reporters. According to rumors, DH Group is preparing to send Joo Tae-hyun to the National Assembly using Seo Baek-han as a stepping stone-.』
“Wait a minute! I’ll turn it off soon. Haa, shit… Why won’t this turn off.”
Instead of Choi Yeon-jun, who was so flustered that he started almost beating the TV, I pressed the power button on the remote control, and the hospital room finally became quiet.
“……S-sorry.”
“What do you have to be sorry to me for? Those people should be sorry to Joo Tae-hyun.”
“Oh, yeah… That’s right, Tae-hyun. He’s in the next room, right? Should I go see him instead?”
“It’s okay. I told him to contact me as soon as he opens his eyes.”
“Come to think of it, is Tae-hyun’s family coming up from Seoul? No, of course they will. Wow… His family must be in an uproar too.”
“Um. There’s too much attention right now, so they’ll come around tomorrow evening.”
Joo Tae-hyun was also taken to Pyongyang University Hospital. It was said to have happened shortly after I went into surgery, so it wasn’t long after.
I pushed him so hard that his physical condition wasn’t good, and he was even involved in this incident. Maybe Joo Tae-hyun’s condition is worse than mine.
“D-Director!”
At that time, the hospital room door burst open with a knock.
“What’s wrong, what’s wrong!”
Choi Yeon-jun was already terrified by Dr. Han’s urgent appearance and jumped up from his seat.
“Was the surgery wrong? Teacher, did you by any chance… put something in Seo Baek-han’s stomach and sew it up…? I’ve seen a lot of that in the news. Ah, or Joo Tae-hyun-.”
“Choi Yeon-jun, get out.”
“Huh?”
“My head is throbbing because you’re yelling next to me, get out.”
“You son of a bitch. Hey! Say something that makes sense! You want me to leave you and Joo Tae-hyun alone in the hospital room and go home by myself?”
“……Then go to the lounge for a while. My head really hurts.”
Tsk. Choi Yeon-jun put his hands in his pockets and grumbled something as he strode out. He’s a pain in the ass even if you treat him well. It seemed like he was saying something similar, but Seo Baek-han ignored him cleanly and turned his gaze to Dr. Han.
“Anyway, what’s going on? Why are you in such a hurry at this hour-.”
“I think you should check this, so I brought it.”
Dr. Han pushed up his glasses with a trembling hand and handed Seo Baek-han the printout he was holding. Had he sweated a lot? The ends of the water-soaked paper were wrinkled.
“I’ll show this data to Director and then discard it immediately. I think you’d want that.”
“What is it… This is a blood test result, isn’t it?”
Seo Baek-han quickly scanned the familiar terms and graphs. Seeing that there were two sheets of paper, it seemed to be a comparison of the condition before and after the surgery, and unlike Dr. Han’s concerns, there was nothing particularly noticeable.
There are no seriously high numbers even before the surgery, and there’s no need to mention after the surgery. You can see that it’s almost normal… Wait a minute.
“……Dr. Han.”
Seo Baek-han’s gaze, which had been scanning the paper indifferently, lingered on one place for a long time. Seo Baek-han, who was calculating what the term meant without even blinking, burst out laughing without realizing it.
“I think this is wrong.”
He has always thought that there is nothing more unsightly than denying something that goes against his feelings when there is clear evidence in front of him, but this really doesn’t make sense.
That’s because.
“The Imprinting level can’t be this high.”
At the bottom of the section where various information values about the Shifter are recorded, the Imprinting cell reaction level was far beyond normal.
The test results show that such an explosive level is only possible in one case.
“Who the hell did I Imprint with?”
When Imprinted with another Shifter.